Hey Snackers,
Can't believe we almost forgot — Happy Birthday, Batman.
Markets inched up to start the week. That's even as a British travel agency/airline went bankrupt mid-flight, stranding 600K travelers worldwide (more on our Snacks pod).
Fitbit is for sale — the whole company
"People familiar with the matter"... They're usually important. On Friday they said Fitbit hired an investment bank to help find a buyer. Investors didn't care about the lack of official-ness to the headline, and snatched up stock on hopes they'd benefit from an acquisition (companies tend to buy other ones for an amount higher than the current share price).
368 calories burned, 982 steps taken... and a 12% stock price jump. That was Friday, but Fitbit has fallen 90% since 2015. Back when Fitbit and Jawbone were in their prime leading the wearable devices game, things were different. Now Fitbit is squeezed on both sides:
- From above: Apple Watch debuted in 2015, winning sales from high-income humans who track heart rates and want to be even closer to their zzz zzz zzz iMessage notifications. Even Samsung has a fancy smartwatch now for non-iPeople.
- From below: Don't need a retina touch screen on your wrist? Low-cost fitness trackers from Huawei and Xiaomi are undercutting Fitbit's "Inspire" trackers on price.
Where are the synergies?... Fitbit lost money each year since it pivoted to smartwatches to compete with Apple. For another company to acquire Fitbit, it must use Fitbit's hardware, software, and people to make money better than Fitbit did (aka find "positive synergies"). Tying Fitbit more closely to Google's Android operating system could do that. Or plant fitness-tracking chips into Nike shoes? We're idea people.
Apple decides to keep Mac Pro production in the US
Macs are bigger in Texas... Apple will not move Mac Pro desktop production to China, like it had reportedly been planning to. It's another "supporting America" move that Apple's PR team loved announcing. But this one has a scent of trade war diplomacy that investors were into — Apple stock rose almost a half percent on the decision.
Keep Austin weird and wired... Your Mac Pro smell like brisket? It's one of the few Apple products not assembled in China — it's made in Austin, TX since 2013. But this past summer, that almost changed:
- President Trump's new tariffs made Chinese parts used in the Mac Pro more expensive to import to the Texas assembly line.
- So Apple was reportedly thinking of moving the whole production out of Texas to China — the opposite of what Trump wanted.
- Then last week, the Trump Admin exempted 10 Apple parts that would've been hit with tariffs — so Apple agreed to stay after all.
The transactional states of America... The new tariffs would've cost Apple $$$ (American companies that buy Chinese stuff pay for tariffs, and often try to pass that on to you and us by raising prices). Instead, Apple essentially threatened to move jobs outside the US. Then it got the tariffs waived by the Administration. This is the nature in which companies and countries handle relations with President Trump, and vice versa.
Bloomingdale's joins the rental clothing club
Disowning is the new black... Legendary department store Bloomingdale's jumped into clothing rental this week. Confusingly-named "My List at Bloomindale's" costs $149/month for 10 items you use, minorly-abuse, then return. Rental-ware is just 1% of the apparel market, but it surged 24% last year, while fashion overall grew 5%. Here's who recently got in:
- The original look = Rent The Runway: The decade-old rental pioneer is now a unicorn, boasting 25 drop-off points (19 of them in WeWorks) and a new club in San Francisco to meet fellow dress-renters.
- The moocher look = Levi's: Denim's finest doesn't have its own rental service — but it partnered with Rent The Runway on a revenue share deal to offer up its skinny jeans on their platform.
- The newbie look = Nuuly: It's the rental brand of Urban Outfitters that just launched this summer to take on all the others.
"Clothing as a Service"... CaaS. It's now a thing. The startup CaaStle has it in its name. Clothing rental is almost entirely logistics — shipping is its greatest cost. So CaaStle's software and warehouses handle all that for clients like retail chain Express. And solving that logistics challenge could make it the greatest threat to Bloomingdale's and Rent The Runway yet.
Clothing Rental is one big bet... and we’re all waiting on the answer. Both fashion brands and retail chains are experimenting with clothing rental programs because the industry could go in 1 of 2 directions:
- Cannibalization: Shoppers could stop buying clothes and just rent instead, potentially hurting sales.
- Boosting: Shoppers could start testing clothes before they buy, thereby helping sales.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Sip: Boston Beer Company stock jumps after an analyst says its Truly spiked seltzer can take on rival White Claw
- Unicorning: Airbnb said last week it would IPO next year — so the NYT figured out how employees pushed the company to announce that
- FYI: Apple's streaming service Apple TV+ snags Oprah's Book Club for a show
- FYI+: Disney's streaming service Disney+ starts taking pre-orders
- Work'd: WeWork's CEO Adam Neumann now faces board members who want to get rid of him because of pre-IPO problems
- !: Yahoo! gets an aggressively lowercase rebrand
Tuesday
- Earnings from Nike, Blackberry, and Nio.
- The 74th UN General Assembly begins in New York.
ID: 961201